Flying Service by the conclusion of hostilities. 

 Many of these young men, apart from the zest 

 and adventure which made them love soaring 

 in the air, from the speciality of their training 

 and the length of time they had devoted to the 

 pursuit of aviation, regarded it as their life 

 profession, having reached heights of greater 

 efficiency in this line than their pre-war occu- 

 pations. On demobilization they viewed flying 

 with greater congeniality and saw in it greater 

 opportunity than the pursuits they had given 

 up to enlist. 



Put to Multifarious Uses 



Canada was quick to realize tfie many uses 

 to which these war-perfected machines could 

 be put to in her national life in times of peace, 

 and the advisability of enlisting rapidly in her 

 peace-flying army the host of trained men who 

 were returning to her shores. Aircraft were 

 quickly adopted for all manner of public work 

 and their utilization is still being rapidly ex- 

 tended. Most provincial governments find fly- 

 ing craft invaluable in forest work, patrolling, 

 assisting surveys, photographing and particu- 

 larly in reporting and combating forest fires. 

 They have been introduced into the fishing 

 industry to locate fish schools and signal their 

 approach. Machines of both heavy and light 

 types have engaged in the seal hunt and threaten 

 to revolutionize the industry. In many sections 

 government mails are carried by aeroplanes. 



Private organizations, particularly lumber and 

 pulp and paper companies, are utilizing them to 

 an ever-increasing extent as they discover the 

 greater economy and accuracy as well as rapidity 

 of work conducted from planes. Commercially 

 the scope of their work is continually enlarging 

 both in freight and passenger service, and busi- 

 ness firms of this nature which a couple of years 

 ago could be enumerated on the two hands, 

 have grown to cover several large pages. The 

 extensive use of aircraft has this summer brought 

 the oil fields of the sub-Arctic much nearer to 

 civilization and accessible to greater and more 

 rapid exploitation. 



The Canada Air Board 



To supervise flying, to stabilize the pursuit in 

 Canada, and to protect both flyers and the pub- 

 lic by seeing that only capable qualified men 

 engaged in the practice, the Canada Air Board 

 was authorized by act of Canadian parliament 

 in 1919 and has practically entire supervision of 

 all matters connected with aeronautics in the 

 Dominion. Among the phases of their work is 

 to construct and maintain government aer- 

 dromes, to examine and report on proposals for 

 commercial air services, and to prescribe aerial 

 routes. The Board regulates the licensing of 

 pilots in aircraft, sees to the registration of li- 



censes and generally that flying in Canada main- 

 tains efficiency and precaution. A government 

 body, having direct control over government 

 flying, it embraces in its scope all Canadian 

 aviation. 



The high efficiency of Canadian government 

 flying is illustrated in the Board's published 

 statistics for the year 1920, when in an approxi- 

 mate mileage of 33,612 miles covered there were 

 only three slight crashes and one person slightly 

 injured. Government machines made 398 flights 

 during the year and the number of hours flown 

 was 480. The statistical summary of civil avia- 

 tion in Canada shows 18,671 machine flights 

 made and 6,505 machine hours flown The aver- 

 age duration of civil flights in minutes was 

 twenty -one and 15,265 passengers were carried 

 in the flights made. Passenger hours flown 

 were 5,614 and a total of 6,740 pounds of freight 

 were carried. 



10,000 Taking "Refresher" Courses 



The government, through the Air Board, is 

 making the greatest utilization of the expert 

 training so many Canadians have received, and 

 in addition to those engaged in the regular 

 pursuit of flying, endeavors to keep all trained 

 men who desire to so fit themselves up to a state 

 of efficiency. Thus "refresher" courses have 

 been introduced to give ex-pilots a month's 

 flying at the government's expense. This sum- 

 mer ten thousand ex-air service men are availing 

 themselves of these courses and keeping their 

 hands in. In the first eight months of this 

 innovation, ex-air force officers did over 2,200 

 hours of flying, covering a distance of approxi- 

 mately 200,000 miles. Thus, as the air service 

 of Canada increases there will always be a 

 supply of highly trained experts to staff mach- 

 ines. 



Record of a War Industry 



Like an echo of the Great War in a period 

 when the Dominion is just emerging from the 

 economic maelstrom in which the Titan con- 

 flict plunged her, comes the report from the 

 Dominion Bureau of Statistics of the Canadian 

 explosives industry for the year 1918 and its 

 record of the meteoric career of what rose to be 

 for the time, an important Canadian industry 

 to wane as rapidly as it had risen. 



During the year 1918 when the pinnacle of the 

 munitions industry was attained, this order of 

 manufacturing accounted for a capitalization of 

 $54,112,884 and a production of $186,034,980, 

 Eleven firms were manufacturing explosives in 

 Canada, of which five were in Ontario, three in 

 British Columbia and three in Quebec. The 

 total investment of all the firms engaged in the 

 industry was $19,172,539, an aggregate of 4,959 

 persons being engaged receiving in salaries and 

 wages $6,420,847. 



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